Hokkaido prison and penal servitude

[Eugen]

The development and development of the colonial frontier in many countries was organically intertwined with the emergence of the practice of the massive use of hard labor. The place of exile and further forced labor of prisoners was the American colonies, and Australia with New Zealand, and, of course, Russian Siberia. Japan, which embarked on the path of modernization after the restoration of imperial power and the abolition of the shogunate in 1868 (events known as the "Meiji Restoration"), readily accepted the experience of the "developed" powers in this area.

Hokkaido is the northernmost of the four main islands of Japan (the other three are Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku). Its area is 83.5 thousand square kilometers, and the population is just over five and a half million people. Now it is perceived by the vast majority of the country's inhabitants as an integral part of it, however, until the middle of the 19th century, the presence of the Japanese there was extremely limited and the territory subject to the shogun was only a small principality of Matsumae at its southern tip. Even the diaries of Europeans who traveled around the island in the second half of the 19th century (for example, very interesting notes by Isabella Bird "The Unworn Trails of Japan") indicate the predominance of the indigenous population there - the Ainu, who also live in Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and even the continental Far East.

The development of Hokkaido was actually the first colonial experience of Japan, which, under the then dominant policy of imperialism, saw its expansion as a completely normal and natural process. They hoped to find minerals on the northern island, the acute shortage of which was another incentive to expand the country's borders, and concerns about a possible Russian threat only added fuel to the fire.

However, very quickly, however, the settlement of Hokkaido began to play another important role - the island became an ideal place for all unnecessary and dangerous elements of society. In the first years of the new system, they were ruined after social and economic upheavals, peasants and small samurai, who were offered to go to a kind of "military settlements" (tondenbei) in order to simultaneously develop agriculture and repulse a possible enemy. Later, prisoners joined them, the number of which went up sharply after numerous riots against the new government and social unrest.

An approximate idea of how widespread this problem was is given by the dynamics of the number of all those who are in prisons in Japan (that is, including those awaiting a court decision in temporary isolators and other places of detention): if in 1876 their number was about 22 thousand people, then through six years (in 1882) it doubled, and in 1885 reached almost 80 thousand people! With a population of about 40 million people (that is, three times less than now), the number of all prisoners was then twice that of, for example, in 1999 (46 thousand people).

The idea of sending prisoners to Hokkaido was not the opening of a new administration. At the end of the XVIII century, when the Japanese began to fear the expansion of Russians from the north and began to think about strengthening their presence on Ezo (the then name of Hokkaido), the shogunate officials offered to send all the exiles to the settlement there. However, at that time, the central government did not have sufficient resources to carry out such a large-scale program, and the development of Hokkaido was slow, and there was simply no one to control the prisoners.

The first person to propose replacing all forms of links to forced labor in Hokkaido was the reformer Iwakura Tomomi, who lived in the Meiji era (1868-1912).

The need to make Hokkaido the center of prison reform was also supported by one of the authors of the first Japanese constitution, the most influential politician of the time, Ito Hirobumi. “I am convinced that criminals should be sent to Hokkaido. The climate of Hokkaido and its natural conditions are unlike the rest of the islands (Japan), but there are hundreds of kilometers of land there, and criminals can be sent to clear this land or work in a mine. In those days when it will be too cold there, they can be provided with the necessary work indoors. And then, when the deportees and those sentenced to hard labor are released at the end of their sentence, they can remain in the same place to cultivate the land or be involved in production, so that in the end they will have children, and all this will contribute to the growth of the population of Hokkaido, ”he believed .

This idyllic picture was, of course, a lot adjusted in reality, but the project itself was approved by the State Council in 1880. The next year, construction began on two new correctional facilities in Hokkaido - Kabato (near the city of Tsukigatati), and then Sorati, specially chosen because of the nearby coal deposits in Khoronai.

From 800 to 1,200 prisoners were sent annually to work in the Khoronai mines, the development of which began in 1883, and their total share among all workers soon became up to 80%.

Working conditions there were far from ideal. Some idea about this is given by the description made by the professor at the University of Tokyo Okada Asataro: “Drinking water is dirty, it is rotten and unsuitable for consumption. Because of this, many prisoners have diseases of the digestive system, chronic indigestion, diarrhea ... There is no separation between the places for the delivery of natural needs and for food. Where prisoners work, they constantly breathe coal dust and air with impurities of harmful gases from the mine. Therefore, many have lung diseases. ” As a result, mortality was very high: in 1889 alone, 265 people died in the Khoronai mines.

The Horonai and Miike mines in Kyushu (also used the labor of prisoners from the prison built in 1883) were acquired by Mitsui, which later became one of the largest Japanese corporations. According to the agreement concluded with the government, the labor of prisoners from nearby prisons continued to be used in mines, which, of course, was very beneficial for the company.

The successful development of mines in Khoronai served as an example for the opening of a new prison in Kushiro (1885) in the eastern part of the island near the town of Sibetya, where a sulfur deposit was discovered. It belonged to a private company from the very beginning, but also used prisoners from Kushiro as workers. In 1887, its owner was the founder of the Yasuda conglomerate, Yasuda Zenjiro, under whose leadership production tripled in the first year and the same in the next. About 500 prisoners worked directly in the mine, and even more on related projects - laying a railway from the mine to the city, telephone lines, and so on. More than half of the workers received injuries associated with production, and became blind as a result of poisoning with sulfur gas. In the first six months of the mine’s operation alone, 42 people died.

The government did not have sentimental feelings about the hardships of life of prisoners. Secretary of State Council and close associate Ito Hirobumi Kaneko Kentaro, sent in 1885 to Hokkaido with an inspection, said bluntly following the results of his mission: “When the number of hardened criminals is as high as it is now, government spending on keeping prisons increases unmatched. So if we send prisoners to the necessary work, and they will not cope with difficult conditions and die, then reducing their number can be seen as a positive measure in reducing the cost of maintaining prisons. "

He could be quite satisfied with the implementation of his brutal program - between 1884 and 1894, about 44 thousand people died in prisons throughout Japan.

In total, in Hokkaido correctional facilities - Kabato, Sorati, Kushiro, Abashiri and Tokati - in 1893, 7230 people were detained; the number of prisoners in various temporary labor camps in Hokkaido is estimated at several thousand more. By that time they had built about 700 kilometers of roads, bridges, power lines and other infrastructure needed to populate the island.

In conditions of low population density and the absence of established management structures, Hokkaido prisons often became the administrative and political center of the area. For example, the director of the Kabato prison, Tsukigata Kiyoshi, also served as the chief of the postal service in the region, which made communication with the central government through him. Locals went to see the prison doctor, and some rooms were used as a school for their children.

The director of the Sorati prison, Watanabe Koraaki, having discovered the unsatisfactory quality of the water, organized - also using the labor of prisoners - looking for a source of water of decent quality and then led her to the village. Thus, in 1888, the village of Itikishiri was the second place in Japan after Yokohama, where a modern water conduit was laid. Of all 2832 people who inhabited the village at that time, more than half, namely 1630 people, were prisoners.

The prison in the city of Abashiri on the northern coast of the island is a kind of symbol of the new penitentiary system and has become notorious in Japanese popular culture as a place that is clearly better not to get into. Thanks to a series of feature films about the prisoners of this institution, the name of the prison became a household name, and with the closure of the old complex and the creation of a museum in its place, Abashiri turned into one of Hokkaido's tourist attractions.

By its appearance, this prison was obliged to pave the way from the central city of Sapporo to the Sea of Okhotsk. Hokkaido Governor Takeshiro Nagayama, who observed the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway during an official visit to the Russian Empire and was very worried about the Russian threat, commissioned the construction of the Central Road in 1890 to the head of the Kushiro Ohinoe Terutika Prison. He personally conducted an inspection of the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk of the island and chose the village of Abashiri for the starting point. Kushiro Arima Shirosuke, a young prison officer, was appointed responsible for this project.

In order to build a temporary prison, the first 50 prisoners from Kushiro prison were sent there in 1890, then their number was replenished every month. Initially, their place of detention was called "Abashiri syuto gayyakuse" - "External place of detention (or just a camp) of prisoners in Abashiri." About a third of the prisoners were serving life sentences, and the rest had terms of at least 12 years of hard labor. However, one cannot talk about the prevalence of inveterate criminals and bandits among them. The Japanese Penal Code provided for such punishments not only for serious violent crimes, but also for political and anti-state ones. In particular, many representatives of the Popular Rights Movement (Minken Undo) became victims of political repression.

Upon completion of the construction of the prison, the arriving prisoners immediately began road works in an emergency mode, which was largely due to the ups and downs of Russian-Japanese relations.

April 29, 1891 there was a notorious incident in Otsu - an attempt on the life of Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, committed by police officer Sanzo Tsuda. Tsesarevich, as you know, survived, and Tsudu was sentenced to life imprisonment (he was appointed to serve him in Kushiro, where he died of pneumonia in the same 1891). And although the problem seemed to be settled by diplomatic methods rather than military, many in Japan feared that Russia was about to launch an attack on their country.

Arima decided that it was necessary to complete the construction of the road as soon as possible, despite any obstacles. Forced to work almost around the clock, the conditions were extremely difficult. In summer, an outbreak of beriberi was observed due to rains; in autumn and winter, prisoners suffered from cold. As a result, a road of 163 kilometers was laid in record time — eight months — but it cost the lives of 211 prisoners, or one sixth of all workers; most of them were buried there.

In terms of a thousand people, these figures correspond - with all possible reservations - to the death rates in the most difficult period in the Gulag (1938 - 91 people per thousand, 1942 - 176 people per thousand).

This tragic incident cooled the ardor of the leadership, and Arima himself began to regularly write to the government about the need to prohibit the use of forced labor by prisoners, at least outside the prison. In 1894, the Japanese parliament granted this request, but the further industrial development of Hokkaido required a large amount of cheap labor, which led to the emergence of the phenomenon of takobeyo ro: do: deserving separate consideration - forcing ordinary hired workers into slave labor conditions.

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[Гудимов Анатолий Геннадиевич]

Truly they say: "From the bag and from the prison - do not renounce!"

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Thanks for the interesting stuff.

 

[Плотников Юрий Михайлович]

Thanks, interesting!